SWIMMING; Beard Back in Pool, Not Over Her Head

By KAREN CROUSE

Published: January 16, 2007

Her back conspicuously turned to an arresting black-and-white photograph of herself in a bikini, the swimmer Amanda Beard sat at a conference table in a Midtown fashion showroom talking about one of her favorite pastimes, riding dirt bikes.

''The first time I jumped on a dirt bike I flew into the air,'' said Beard, a Speedo model who was in town last week for Swimwear Market week. ''I landed on my feet but the bike was in pretty bad shape.''

As she was talking, Beard absently fingered a strand of pearls around her neck. From her refined tastes in fashion to her rambunctious off-road pursuits, the 25-year-old Beard is hard to pin down: she is a model without any visible vanity; a mainstream sports star who turns her back on convention; a sex symbol who is a tomboy.

Her idiosyncratic nature is perhaps best exemplified by her recent decision to return to competitive swimming after a two-year hiatus. After setting a world record in 2004 and winning an individual Olympic gold medal in the 200-meter breaststroke at Athens in her third Olympic Games, Beard had nothing left to achieve in the sport. What pulled her back into the pool was the routine, not the rewards.

''At first I thought: I've kind of done everything,'' she said. ''What else is there for me to do? And then I realized, I'm only 25 years old. Why would I stop swimming when I still love it?''

In 1996, at age 14, Beard became the second-youngest United States medalist in Olympic history, winning two individual silvers in the breaststroke events and a gold in the relay at the Atlanta Games. Four years later, she won a bronze medal in the 200-meter breaststroke at Sydney, Australia. In Athens in 2004, she captured the gold medal in the 200 breaststroke and earned silvers in the 200 individual medley and 400 medley relay.

For more than a decade, the years have turned like pages in a scrapbook. In front of the public's eyes, Beard transformed from America's little sister to an American male's pinup girl.

She went from carrying a teddy bear to the starting blocks to appearing on the cover of men's magazines in suits more revealing than the ones she raced in. As Beard has matured, her fan base has grown from pigtailed girls on the pool decks to include the pigtailed girls' older brothers and fathers.

When asked if her celebrity comes more from her modeling or her Olympic medals, Beard said: ''It depends. When men come up to me when I'm at events, I know it's because they've seen the photo spreads in FHM or Maxim. When it's little kids, I know it's because of swimming.''

In 2005, Beard began dating the Nascar driver Carl Edwards. Traveling with him on the racecar circuit was hard, and not only because she constantly worried that he was one turn from a fiery crash.

''Not being involved in the competition, it was such a helpless feeling,'' Beard said. ''I couldn't work on the car. I couldn't jump in the car and drive it. All I could do was be supportive. I'm not used to being on that side.''

Hanging out with the racing crowd changed how Beard looked at herself as an athlete. ''I saw guys in their 50s still racing cars and having fun and it was very interesting to me,'' she said.

A thought that she had pushed into the back of her mind after Athens came creeping back: She was still young. Why should she retire from swimming if she did not want to?

After dating for a year, Beard and Edwards broke up last summer. Shortly after that, Beard, a native Southern Californian who attended the University of Arizona, put her house in Tucson up for sale and moved back to Los Angeles.

She bought a three-bedroom house in Venice and resumed training with Dave Salo, who is in his first season as the men's and women's coach at Southern California. Beard, who earns $15,000 a speaking engagement, has had to cut back on her public appearances to make time for her workouts in the pool.

''The hardest thing is waking up in the morning and getting out of bed,'' she said, laughing. ''I got used to sleeping in. But once I'm at the pool, I'm so excited to jump in and get a hard workout in.''

It has taken her a while to regain her feel for the water. Beard's competitiveness, on the other hand, came back just like that. ''It's funny,'' she said. ''When the boys jump in, I get real feisty. If they beat me, I get real upset.''

That person she described was hard to picture as Beard stood demurely in a conference room last week, pointing out the positive features of lycra T-shirts and boy-cut bikini bottoms to the fashion-magazine editors, buyers and stylists who walked through the door. In her life as in her dress, Beard clearly favors a multilayered approach.

Photos: Amanda Beard, a Speedo model who was in town last week, won the gold medal in the 200-meter breaststroke at Athens in 2004. (Photo by Vincent Laforet/The New York Times); (Photo by Joe Fornabaio for The New York Times)